Our Meeting In Joshua Tree
Life progresses at a vertiginous pace, whether you’re on a sabbatical or not, whether you have idle or busy days. I am now back in California after 64 days on the road, and it feels like a lifetime of experiences has slid under my feet in the blink of an eye.
To respect the linearity of my storytelling, I have lowered the frequency of my posts. It takes time to flesh out an honest report of the events while still living them fully. I have been a professional photographer for most of my life, using images to tell stories. But recently, I have prioritized the inward perspective of written essays.
Still, how to write about intimate experiences such as falling in love and experiencing your beloved’s presence for the first time, while still preserving the privacy of that intimacy? This one, as well as my two previous posts (First essay, here. Second, here. ) are such attempts.
I got to the Airbnb-rented house half an hour before she did after a short ride from Twentynine Palms, the neighboring town where I had spent the previous night. I had stopped at the Joshua Tree health food market to grab groceries and flowers, but had found no flowers. And no eggs.
I parked the bike by the front door, circled the house – the smallest of the three rental units on the property – and unlocked the back door. I inspected every room, and to my delight, the chosen Casita felt like a welcoming home to our first encounter as a couple, with a perfect combination of comfortable and modern decor. It was clean, elegant and inviting. I was still missing the flowers for her, but I didn’t have enough time to fetch them in the next town. I unloaded the motorcycle and changed out of my riding suit. Now I could relax into the exciting anticipation of her arrival.
She pulled in a few minutes later. I walked up to her and was filled with joy when I saw her glowing smile through the windshield. She came out, walked toward me, and we hugged in silence.
I had played out this scene many times before in my mind. We both had. Yet, it unfolded in an unpredicted way. Unlike the expansion that I had experienced thus far, this time around I found myself closing off. It was a strange experience adjusting to the spacial representation of her, as though she were a separate person from the one I had fallen in love with during our FaceTime calls; I found myself being distant, nearly avoidant. And I was freaking out with my own response.
Utter loss of control: first, opening my heart, then fearing opening my heart. And for a couple of hours, I remained at the mercy of fear. And weirdness.
Slowly, my defensiveness became clear; this was the first time that I was opening again after an important, long-term relationship had ended. Unbeknownst to me, I had been both eager for and also dreading new emotional involvement. The nearly one month of FaceTime connection had hidden this from me, but now that we were physically together, the fear had been unveiled.
You see, we never really had a “honeymoon phase” of blind idyllic adoration. We had adored each other, yes, but in the bright light of our humanity. Because of our stance of vulnerability since the very beginning, ghosts from each other’s wounding had already arisen, and we had confronted them.
This time was no different, and we addressed the challenge thoroughly. On Saturday, my mind was present again in the same location as my physical body, and our intimacy and trust were bright and sharp, as was the glorious desertscape of Joshua Tree. We indulged in time at the house, then went for a sunset visit to the National Park only a few minutes away. The photos you have seen @inwardride, on Instagram, were taken during that visit.
On our way back, we stopped at the local Thai restaurant. As we walked in, the owner, with a heavy accent, shouted to us, “We ran out of food…!” Her customers had also heard her, and as in a crescendo of a dramatic TV commercial, they had all stopped to look at us. Silence in the room. I looked back at them, all sitting motionless across the small, packed restaurant, waiting for their own (probably very limited) chosen dish to be served, frozen in a half-stunned, half-dull, gaze. It was in Twentynine Palms, fifteen miles away, that we finally had our Thai dinner.
Sunday came too soon. During breakfast in town, away from the weekend crowd that had devoured all Joshua Tree’s Thai food, a couple shouted out as she walked by: “Hey! You’re slaying it with your style!” We both laughed with joy and complicitous mischief.
At the bakery, a couple approached us when they matched my riding suit to the packed motorcycle that they had seen outside. They had traveled together to Alaska on a BMW R1200 GS Adventure a few years back. We all sat down, exchanged stories and I marveled at the idea of riding two up and camping. (Already fully loaded while riding alone, I wouldn’t know how I’d do it.) They both recognized and pointed out how we were glowing, and the wife asked us to tell the story of how we’d come together. Holding my hand, she started. It was the husband, only a couple of minutes later, who interrupted her mid-way and hijacked the conversation, diverting the subject. His jolting intervention was curious to me; I’ve always wondered what internal discomfort prompts such abrupt interruptions…
It suddenly felt like we had spent too much time socializing, when, in fact, we were about to say good-bye. But we didn’t. At 3:00 p.m., we caravanned West, taking turns at following each other. Our short 48-hour encounter had barely addressed the urge to be with one another, and we returned to the way it all had started: our mobile phones. Although in separate vehicles, still together, we milked every last bit of our proximity, until we could meet again.
She had become part of my journey.
Joshua Tree National Park, California. October 2019. ©Ciro Coelho/InwardRide.com